


Men About Town

by imitateslife



Category: Victor Frankenstein (2015)
Genre: Friendship, M/M, Manipulation, Opium, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2017-10-12
Packaged: 2019-01-16 06:38:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12337464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imitateslife/pseuds/imitateslife
Summary: When Victor joins his flatmate for a night on the town, he gets more than he bargained for in the form of an opium den, Finnegan, and his own hubris. Pre-canon.





	Men About Town

Victor walked slowest among the group of college students, for once in his life content to let other lead the way. The autumnal chill brought melancholy on the wind. He dug his hands deeply into his pockets as he trudged along, stubbornly staring at the back of Straussman’s new jacket and suddenly feeling very shabby compared to his new flatmate and his friends. Not that Victor cared what anyone thought of him or his clothes. He hugged his coat tighter around him.

“You really ought to have a walking stick,” a voice drawled beside him.

Finnegan.

Victor narrowed his eyes and looked over at the blond. If there was anyone in Staussman’s group of friends who made Victor look shabby, it was Finnegan. Finnegan could make the Prince of Wales look like a pauper. Victor’s jaw rocked side to side.

“It would suit you,” Finnegan continued. “And give your hands something to do besides burrow in your pockets. Slouching the way you are… it’s very unbecoming.”

“Why don’t you run ahead with your friends?”

“The same reason you haven’t run ahead with yours.”

Victor had no friends. He stopped walking and after a few steps, Finnegan stopped too, staring at Victor with his lips turned up just a little at the corners. Victor hated that smirk. His fists balled inside his pockets.

“I agreed to go with Straussman – if I’d have known you were joining us, I would have declined,” Victor said. “As it is, I’m only going to make sure he gets home in one piece.”

“How noble.” Finnegan’s lip curled more – he was no longer smirking, but sneering. “So you’re telling me you weren’t the least bit _curious_ about the opium dens Straussman finds?”

“No and I’m surprised _you_ are. What’ll you do if you’re seen and have to explain to Mummy and Daddy that their golden child is slumming it with the noveau riche in seedy establishments?”

“I’m not slumming it with the noveau riche. I’m with you – son of an esteemed physician, heir to a Swiss barony. You may have refused to come if you knew I’d be here, but you, old boy, you are my alibi.”

Victor began walking – a quicker step, suddenly eager to catch up to the group. Finnegan matched his pace.

“Haven’t you had a day of fun in your life, Frankenstein? My word, we all know you are a great social blunder, but will the wonders of your ineptitude never cease?”

Victor ignored him all the way to the opium den. The heady scent of something sweet burning in the air stung his nostrils as Victor entered the den. Men and a few women so heavily painted that they looked ghoulish in the flickering candlelight lazed on couches and chairs. Bodies twined together in lazy, suggestive poses. A pipe passed from mouth to mouth and Victor could only think of germ theory and how likely it was he would catch disease from these strangers of ill-repute. A soft, low voice in his ear whispered, “Are you having fun yet?”

There he was again – Finnegan, too close and smirking far too much for Victor’s liking. Victor’s brow wrinkled as he scanned the crowd for Straussman and the rest of the boys from college. They were passing around a pipe, eagerly, while one of the prostitutes slithered her way among them.

“What a waste,” Victor said, more to himself than to Finnegan. “He’s not too terrible when he’s sober.”

“How often is that?” Finnegan asked.

Victor didn’t need to answer, they both knew how infrequently Straussman was sober. Between the opium and the morphine and the alcohol, the man seemed determined to die before finishing medical school. Finnegan’s soft hand coiled around Victor’s wrist.  The touch surprised him, as did the next words spoken.

“Follow me.”

Victor followed and he and Finnegan side stepped some bodies on the staircase to a lofted seating area. A quiet corner. The next moments were a blur – a blue pipe, billows of smoke, coughing, another hit, laughter – until Victor found himself laying on a divan with Finnegan’s head in his lap. As Victor spoke, he stroked Finnegan’s hair.

“I don’t ever do this,” he told him. “I have such massive plans – so many things to do-“

“What, university?” Finnegan murmured. He turned his head and nuzzled against Victor’s inner thigh.

Victor’s breath hiched and then he laughed.

“No – no. My vision is beyond university, beyond anything they can teach us at that wretched school.”

“It really is awful,” Finnegan agreed. “So dull. At least when you bother to show up it’s…. stimulating…”

His buzzing lips against Victor’s thigh made Victor moan – low and deep, shuddering into relaxation.

“So dull,” he agreed. “There is so much potential for scientific study that-“ Another sigh as Finnegan rolled onto his stomach to face Victor. “-and we could achieve so many great things if we weren’t encouraged to repeat the work of lesser men.”

“Mm.”  Finnegan gripped Victor’s thighs and pried them further apart. “Would you say then, that you’re a great man?”

Victor let out a blast of laughter at the words. Great man. That was what everyone called his father – what Henry would have been if he’d lived and what Victor had failed all his life to be. He laughed and Finnegan laughed. Something witty was on the tip of Victor’s tongue, but he could quite think – his brain was too fuzzy – and he didn’t know what to say – and Finnegan’s smirk suddenly didn’t seem like such a terrible thing and-

There was a thump from downstairs. Not a quite thump, but the sound of a sofa careening to the floor and a body following suit. Most people ignored it, but Victor leapt up and went to the banister of the loft to see what had happened. The boys from college were all gone – only the prostitute remained and she looked horrified, red mouth agape and kohl-rimmed eyes the size of petri dishes. On the floor, lay an unconscious Straussman. The opium den was silent and tense for a few moments until someone came along to right the sofa. The prostitute slunk after new, more conscious customers and the other patrons continued to smoke and drink and talk about everything from fishmongers to philosophy. Victor bit his lip.

“We need to get him home,” he told Finnegan – suddenly more alert, even if his speech still slurred.

“What do you mean _we_?” Finnegan asked. “He’s your flatmate.”

“Some doctor you’ll be,” Victor sneered and he weaved his way down the stairs and to Strassman’s side.

Victor checked for pulse and breath – both were faint, but present. He lolled Straussman onto his back and attempted to wake him by shaking, but slapping, by calling his name. No response. Victor swore quietly and tried to heave Straussman to his feet, but the world was off kilter, slippery, tilted. Just as Victor struggled to hoist Straussman to his feet, the load lightened. He thought it was the opium, playing tricks, but he looked over and saw Finnegan on Straussman’s other side.

“We should get him in a carriage,” Finnegan slurred.

“Yes, good idea,” Victor agreed. “Did you send for one?”

“You must be joking – my parents would massacre me for being in an opium den with the likes of him.”

“My father would massacre me for asking favors.”

“You don’t suppose the Straussmans-”

“Cut him off in January. Something about vices.”

“Damn.”

“That’s one word.”

They stood there for a moment with an unconscious man stretched between them before, as intelligently as he could, Victor said, “We’ll have to walk him home.”

“I suppose.”

Neither moved. For Victor’s part, it was because the world swung back and forth like a pendulum. He could only imagine what sensation had Finnegan trying to force himself awake. After a few moments, they staggered forward on the count of three and continued to stagger down the streets of London, towards Victor and Straussman’s flat.

“This is what I don’t respect about the noveau riche,” Finnegan said as they rounded a corner. “Over indulgence. You and I, Victor, we know our limits…”

“I don’t have limits,” Victor said back. “I am limitless.”

Finnegan laughed and even though the cold air had sobered Victor up just a bit, he laughed too. He had been serious – very serious – that he was limitless, and usually he would have felt laughed at. But as they reached the steps to the townhouse and Finnegan said, “If there is anyone in this world without limits, it’s you”, Victor felt a swell of pride balloon in his chest. They laid Straussman on the sofa and sat together on the floor in front of the fireplace with glasses of brandy.

“Not what I expected for my night of fun at college,” Victor said. He took a swig of his drink. The fuzzy glow of the opium was dying; he desperately wanted to recapture it. That loose, unguarded feeling with Finnegan’s head in his lap as he told him all his grand plans for the future and felt as if someone in the universe was listening-

“Not a total failure, I hope,” Finnegan said. He hadn’t touched his brandy and now that Victor could see him, he realized just how _clear_ Finnegan’s eyes were – a little red, as scratched by external fumes, but not glazed in the way a man smoking opium’s eyes ought to be. Victor clutched his glass tighter. “I know I got a lot out of it.”

“Did you?” Victor asked softly. His stomach tightened. He thought he might heave onto the floor, but instead he said, “And what’s that?”

“Perspective.” Finnegan rose from the floor and set his glass upon the mantle. “I should be off – until next time you deign to grace the rest of us with your presence in class.”

Victor watched him go, waving and smiling like an idiot.

Inside, one question burned him: what had he told Finnegan that would come back to haunt him?

Of course, by morning, he could only remember vague impressions – wandering hands and lips, a buzz of excitement, laughter.

And, of course, dragging Staussman’s half-dead body back to the flat when he nearly tripped over him in the living room – he’d fallen off the sofa in the night and still slept like a rock in the morning. Still breathing; heart still beating.

Maybe this was what “fun”” was.


End file.
